


A Single Thread

by Cyphomandra



Category: The Melendy Quartet - Elizabeth Enright
Genre: AU, M/M, change one thing, paranormal elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:21:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21841147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyphomandra/pseuds/Cyphomandra
Summary: Then there were four.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 28
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Single Thread

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gloss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/gifts).



> Thanks, as always, to my timely and inexhaustable betas.

**New York, 1956**

All mail arriving at Rush’s apartment building was rounded up by Lucrezia Mulvaney, the co-custodian, and kept under lock-and-key in the tiny basement office. Lucrezia would release letters to their rightful owner only after lengthy enquiries - from your Aunt Ethel again? That knee of hers still bad? It’ll be the arthritis. She oughta try rubbing an onion on it, but mind she slice it in half first, and use it fresh.

After a few weeks of well-meaning advice and interrogations, Rush worked out that if he went down to the basement early on Saturday mornings, when he got in from tending bar at the Spotlight jazz club on West 52nd, Lucretia's husband Mickey would have the office unlocked while he took down the week’s new load of coal and cleared out the furnace, allowing Rush to collect his mail in blissful silence.

The routine was well established by February, four months after Rush had moved in. He climbed the creaky back stairs to the third floor in the dank chill of the early morning, his fingers sorting swiftly through the stack of letters, finding treasure among the mundane bills and circulars. Mona’s weekly update, no doubt full of loving descriptions of her not quite six month old son Leon, not quite six months old; a postcard of Athens from Oliver on his travels; a thin typed envelope from his father; another addressed in Mark's familiar scrawl, from where he was studying all the way across the country at Stanford…

The last item in the stack was a plain white envelope. Mr Rush Melendy, it said, in a careful childish cursive. He could feel the edge of something hard inside and stopped halfway up the stairs to examine it more closely.

No address and no stamp. Rush flipped it over - nothing. 

The sudden jolt of unease was unexpected. He mentally set it aside and pushed his index finger under the flap to tear open the envelope.

A piece of blue paper, folded around whatever he'd felt before. He balanced the stack of unopened mail on one knee and shook the contents free onto the topmost letter. A small black object fell out. Rush picked it up, feeling the cool smooth surface and how the faceted sides sharpened to a lethal point. A flint arrowhead.

Gift, or threat? Rush tucked the arrowhead into his shirt pocket and read the paper.

When I was young, you spun a thread  
To teach me I was not alone  
Now I must spin for you instead  
In hope that you can bring me home

Three chances and three days are all  
You have to find who you don’t miss  
Think back to that you won’t recall  
That disbelief you can’t dismiss.

At the bottom was a scribbled note, “P.S. Isaac (the first).”

Rush read it through again. It made no more sense the second time. Nor did any of it explain why he felt as though someone had whipped the ground out from under his feet to reveal a previously unsuspected abyss.

If he'd had any magic to identify the sender or ascertain intent - a year ago, he might have tried anyway, but that particular hope had been squashed all too thoroughly. The thought of it, and what it had cost him, was still raw. 

The sound of someone leaning on a car horn in the street below cut through Rush's bafflement, and he started up the last flight of stairs and padded down the worn linoleum to his room, intending to think about the message further after he got home. His roommate Eugene, who did casual work for a number of moving companies, had picked up a contract out of town and left the night before, so when Rush put the key to the door only to have it yanked open, he jumped and let out a yelp. 

The man who'd opened it - tall, with dark chiseled features, and wearing surprisingly respectable clothing for this hour of the morning - eyed Rush with disappointment. "Melendy. Where's Eugene?"

Of course it would have to be Louis. Rush straightened up. "Philadelphia." It sounded even more sarcastic than he intended, and he felt a twinge of remorse. "For work. Back tomorrow night."

Louis sagged a little. "Tomorrow?"

Rush nodded. Now that he'd gotten over the surprise, he could see that although Louis' gaberdine trench coat was impeccable and his shoes polished, there were dark shadows under his eyes, and the skin of his face looked dull. Rush chewed his lip. He'd been up for well over twenty-four hours already, sleep was only one of the many things he should be doing, andhis previous interactions with Louis had, Rush was all too aware, served to give the impression that Rush despised him. An offer of help was hardly appropriate.

He'd liked Louis when they'd first met, an easy physical attraction Rush was still uncomfortable with when it occurred outside the confines of certain clubs or bars. Louis had glanced at Rush, half-sprawled across the couch with his nose buried in Asimov's _The Caves of Steel_ and enquired where he was studying. Possibly his discomfort, as well the assumption that Louis was either joking or somehow aware of Rush's dropping out of Juilliard, drove Rush to laugh scornfully and declare that college was just an excuse to avoid dealing with life. He'd expanded on his theme, firing potshots at his younger self; it was only after an oddly quiet Louis left that Eugene informed him Louis was studying English and Comparative Magics at Columbia.

Eugene, who lived very much on the surface of things, thought it was funny. Rush hadn't. A week later, Eugene threw a party and told Rush, who'd offered his bar-tending services, that he should take the night off and if he absolutely had to do something why not the music. Rush, tempted despite himself, made his way over to Eugene's prized Victrola as more and more people crowded into the tiny apartment. 

"Play something I can dance to." Martha, one of Eugene's cousins, hitched herself up on to the open window ledge, swinging her feet. Rush looked up from the stack of 45s and saw Louis slip into the room. He grimaced, thinking, appeared and hitched herself up onto the open window ledge, demanding he play something she could dance to. Rush, flipping through a stack of 45s, saw Louis slip into the room and grimaced, thinking about how to apologise. 

"You don't like him." Martha's sharp gaze studied Rush as he took a sip of his beer. "Because he's queer?"

Rush nearly choked on his beer.

"You didn't know." The tip of her cigarette glowed red against the night sky outside.

"Of course I knew." Rush's voice was too loud. Louis glanced in his direction, and their eyes met. He hastily looked away, feeling as if he'd been scalded.

Martha made an amused sound. Rush forced his face into impassivity. No, he hadn't known, but no doubt Louis now thought he had. How could he apologise now?

"Here." He fumbled one of the records out of its sleeve. "Can you dance to this?"

She could. Rush put his beer down, suddenly nauseated, and listened to Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers singing "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" without hearing a word.

Rush gave up after that. He buried himself in work, and when Eugene threw his next party, Rush made sure he was on late shift at the bar and unable to attend. 

Three months later, and he'd managed to dealing with Louis or his own feelings - until now. Rush eyed Louis, already resigned to this going badly.. A thought occurred to him. 

"How'd you get in?" 

Louis put a hand in his pocket. "Eugene told me where the spare key was. I'll put it back straight away, or you can hide it somewhere new if you'd prefer -" He sounded as if he expected Rush to search him for valuables. 

The arrowhead in Rush's pocket shifted slightly, the weight of it warm against his skin. The poem gave him three chances, no more; but even one chance was more than Rush expected. He only knew how to give up. As he was about to do again.

"Actually I assumed I'd left the door open again," Rush said, deliberately casual. "I also tend to lock my key inside, which is why we have a spare." He shook his head at Louis' outstretched hand. " Keep it or put it back."

Louis hesistated, then put the key back in his pocket. Rush felt a spark of relief.

"What do you need Eugene for?" Rush yawned, belatedly covering his mouth. "Can I help?"

Louis didn't quite meet Rush's eyes. "You look tired." 

It wasn't a no, and Rush was suddenly determined to seize the opportunity. 

"That's what coffee is for." Rush reached past Louis to tug the door shut. "Our hotplate's broken, but there's a Chock Full o'Nuts at the end of the block."

Louis cleared his throat. "All right." He picked up a small case Rush hadn't noticed before and followed him back down the corridor.

Their breaths were puffs of white in the chill air. Neither seemed able to think of anything to talk about. After they'd ordered, Rush cast around for a suitably neutral topic, gave up, fished the arrowhead out of his pocket and dropped it on the formica table top with a click.

Louis' face brightened in surprise. He reached out and tapped the arrowhead with his fingernail, sending it spinning in a lazy spiral. “Neat. Did you find it?”

“I got it in the mail.” Rush had shoved all the letters into his coat pockets; he sorted through them now, retrieving the mysterious blue sheet of paper and handing it over to Louis. "With this. Unsigned, no address." Part of him wanted someone else to laugh it off and shake the unease that was still troubling him.

Louis took the paper. "Secret admirer?" He scanned it, brows drawing together as he read. “No. Poet. It's not exactly ‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,' is it?” He spun the arrowhead around again to point at Rush, his dark eyes intent, attention fully engaged. “But regardless. What don’t you remember?”

Suddenly Rush was somewhere else: the sun’s blinding glare bouncing off rocks as he tried to focus, his cotton shirt heavy with sweat against his skin, the droning buzz of insects in his ear. He was looking for something, he knew that much, and as the thought surfaced, a girl spoke from somewhere behind him, her unfamiliar voice quiet but clear. 

“I found one.” 

Rush turned, desperate to know who was speaking - he must know who she was - and he was back in the diner. The sudden change in temperature was like a blow.

Louis stared at him, wide-eyed. “What the fuck?”

Rush couldn’t speak for a moment. He shut his eyes, trying to hold on to the vision, but it was gone, leaving a growing emptiness in its wake. "Ask me something else," he said, his eyes still shut. "Please."

He heard Louis shifting in his seat, surely about to leave rather than put up with this bizarre behavior.

"You vanished," Louis said, incredulous, and then. "Ah. Okay. Who's Isaac?"

Vanished. Not just Rush, then, and he clung to that as he tried to focus on the question. "My dog." He opened his eyes and tried to concentrate on the screw tops of the salt and pepper shakers in front of him. He was here, in the diner, early Saturday morning. "Was. He died about two years back." Stretched out in front of the kitchen stove after a last afternoon of chasing spring rabbits; he'd been twelve at least, not a bad age for a dog, but part of Rush still expected to reach down a hand and have it licked in welcome whenever he sat down. "I found him on the street when I was a kid and smuggled him home with me."

That sense of an immense loss shifted in him again, an unseen shark nosing beneath the surface. It wasn't just Isaac that he missed. 

Why Isaac? What had made him choose that name? Was there another one - was that what he'd forgotten? When he thought about it, he only got a maddening snippet of music, triumphantly echoing over and over in his mind; an inner voice he tried not to listen to any longer informed him it was Siegfried's horn call from the Ring Cycle.

Louis downed the last of his coffee. "I don't see a connection. But then my knowledge is mostly theoretical. And you're not a practitioner."

Obviously he hadn't forgotten their first conversation. Rush waited for the familiar undertow of guilt. It didn't come. The vision, whatever it was, had completely swept it away. 

"I was unforgiveably rude to you when we first met." Rush put his cup down with a clunk. "I didn't know anything about you. I spent two years at Juilliard and never showed a glimmer of anything magical, and I dropped out before they could sack me. Pretending I never wanted it, was easier. I attacked you because you reminded me of who I wanted to be. I'm sorry."

He didn't want to see Louis' expression. Rush scooped up the arrowhead and counted coins onto the table. 

"I got kicked out of my apartment last night. My landlady doesn't approve of my - activities. I hoped Eugene could help me collect some of my things." Louis added a quarter to the pile and met Rush's startled gaze. "I would appreciate your help. But I'm worried about your riddle." He offered Rush back the creased blue page. 

"So am I." Rush pushed his chair back, scraping it on the lino. "I need to make a phone call."

The booth was at the back and consisted of a wooden screen decorated with uninspired graffiti, a small shelf with the phone itself and a chained phone book, spine splayed from overuse. Rush lined up three dimes and fed in the first. 

He listened to the phone ring three, four, times, picturing it echo in his father's Washington office; the comfortable high-backed wooden chair waiting behind the formal black walnut desk as it had for years. It was only a little after eight in the morning. The chair was likely to still be empty, and what was he going to say anyway? Since Juilliard there was a growing awkwardness between himself and all his family. They'd all believed, Rush included, that his musical ability would mean a commensurate talent for magic; and why not, when he'd been offered more than one scholarship on the strength of it? None of them had thought he'd be one of those rare exceptions whose creativity was strictly based in rationality. 

Five rings. Six. Rush reached to hang up.

"Melendy."

Hearing the familiar voice brought a lump to Rush's throat. He swallowed. "Hello."

"Rush." Warmth, and a slight bemusement. "Good to hear from you."

"I'm fine." Rush knew his father wouldn't believe it, which was why Rush hadn't gone home since Juilliard. "Well. I'll come up soon, I promise. I wanted to ask something."

"Go ahead." No hesitation. Rush thought of all the things he could ask, or should have said. 

Start with the most important. "Isaac. Do you remember why I called him that?"

"Hmm." It was a sound of consideration rather than interrogation. "Not biblical, or surely you'd've chosen Esau for your hairy man. I think - hmm."

Rush waited. He could picture his father leaning back in his chair and turning - as he always did - to look at the framed portrait photograph of his wife, Rush's mother, on the wall.

"When you asked, I knew. And now it's gone. Strange. But I think it meant a club of some sort, a secret organisation you and Mona and Oliver had."

"Did I think of it?" Rush prised a splinter off the edge of the shelf with his fingernail. 

"No, it was -" his father broke off. When he spoke again, he sounded uncharacteristically unsure. "The name was yours. But the club wasn't."

Siegfried's horn echoed again in Rush's mind. Just as Louis had seen him vanish, it wasn't only Rush who'd forgotten. 

"Thank you," Rush said to his father, as sincerely as he could. He didn't want to push further until he knew what he was dealing with. "I have to go now." He had an inkling of what the problem was now, at least.

"I won't say take care." His father sounded more himself. "But think first."

"And when I get lost, I'll ask a policeman," Rush said amicably. 

"You're always welcome," his father said, wistfulness creeping in. Rush set the phone down gently.

Louis was waiting outside, stamping his feet against the cold. He'd gone back to the apartment to fetch Eugene's dolly cart and now trundled it along beside him. The sun finally struggled above the horizon, and as they cut through a small streetside park to the subway station, it caught the beads of ice strung out along the wire of the fence, turning them to fragile diamonds. A puddle in the middle of the gravel path was completely iced over. 

Louis skirted around it. Rush considered teasing him and decided against it; any connection between them was still tenuous. As he stepped forward onto the ice he glanced down.

For a second Rush thought it was his own reflection in the puddle, the familiar untidy dark hair, but the angles were wrong. Whoever was there in the ice looked up, eyes meeting his with a wild hope as well as a shock of familiarity that still had no other memories attached. Her mouth opened as if to call out -

His foot descended before he could think to stop, and it split the ice with a clean snapping crack. The image vanished.

One chance gone. The realisation was sickening.

"Louis!" His foot was clammy with cold. The few remaining splinters of ice held nothing but water. 

Louis came hurrying back. He listened to Rush's description and didn't comment on his stepping onto the ice. "A woman? With hair like yours? A relative?"

Rush stood on one leg to yank off his shoe, tipping out water. "I have one sister, Mona, and she's blonde." Also, he knew where she was.

Louis pursed his lips. "A hidden twin? Another universe's version of you."

"Is that possible?" The idea caught at Rush's imagination. 

"As I said, I mainly deal with magical theory, not practice. My big project was examining personal cantrip signifiers across language families. I could ask my tutor for you." 

"Not yet." Rush pushed his damp shoe back on with a shiver. "Where's your place?"

"Shouldn't we deal with your problem?"

We. Louis was standing close, close enough Rush could see the stubble regrowing on his chin. Kicked out of his apartment. Did he have anywhere else to go? 

Rush shrugged. "I have three days. You first."

Louis hadn't said where his apartment was, but the train brought them to a part of uptown with wide, clean sidewalks lined with imposing buildings. When Louis stopped, it was outside an elegant pre-war block with not one but two doormen standing outside, their scarlet uniforms apparently adequate protection against the biting cold. Louis started up the stairs, his face set. Rush trailed in his wake.

“Mr Myer.” The left doorman nodded at Louis. "And-"

“He’s with me,” Louis said. “Al, we need access to the service elevator.”

The left doorman glanced at the right, who stared off into the distance with the expression of someone who was not getting involved. Louis waited. Eventually the left sighed and painstakingly produced a crowded key ring, from which he removed a small black key.

"I expect it back in half an hour, Mr Myer."

The service elevator was around the back, through an entrance that was more functional than elegant. It took them up to the eighth floor and a white wooden door with an ornate golden handle. Louis pushed it open with a click. 

Inside, polished wooden floorboards stretched out under high arched ceilings. There was a door on the far wall, but this room was empty, lit by a bare lightbulb. Louis stopped. 

"Mac? About time." An older woman in a chic woolen suit came through the far door, holding a small can of paint and a paintbrush. She saw Louis and glared. "Give me my keys back this instant or I'll call the police."

Louis put the dolly cart down. "Connie. I came to collect my property."

"It was in my place. I had Mac take it to the dump." Connie marched to the opposite wall and painted over an almost imperceptible scuff mark with short, brisk flicks. 

Louis stared at her rigid back. "All of it?"

"He's coming back for the piano." Connie sounded triumphant.

"You have a piano," Rush said, before he could stop himself. Connie's intent expression switched abruptly from the walls to Rush, and he realised he could see a family resemblance between her and Louis. 

"Who is this? Are you bringing your depraved paramours in to my property?"

"He's here to help me move." 

Rush, all too aware of still wearing his bar clothes under an ageing winter coat, tried to look like someone who had no idea what a depraved paramour was. Connie's unimpressed gaze moved over him, and then abruptly back to Louis.

"You'll never get it out. And you can't play."

Louis' jaw firmed. "It's never too late to learn." He tugged the cart with him towards the far door. 

The adjacent room was similarly grand but on a smaller scale, with large windows on both corners that framed the city below like a theatre set. Against the facing wall stood a small upright piano, the rippled flame mahogany of the woodwork like a tiger's hide. The lid was up but the music rest was empty.

"You want us to move a piano." Rush couldn't decide if he was amused or horrified.

"It wasn't quite what I had in mind." Louis began unwrapping the protective blankets Eugene kept tied to the dolly. "It'd be a shame to leave it. And it's - smallish."

Rush shot him a disbelieving look, but he had to agree. It was a beautiful piece. He ran a finger over one corner, tracing the grain of the wood, and then down onto the keys, stopping at middle C. 

He hadn't played since the day he'd walked out of Juilliard. One more loss.

 _A, B, C._ Unlock the clue. Not his poem, but his solution… Rush touched the keys, each note singing clearly in the empty room.

"You play?" Louis untangled rope. "It was my aunt's piano. She died a few years ago. My uncle remarried and his new wife likes mid-century modern and bungalows, so he sold off her furniture. I asked if I could have a piece as a keepsake - something small, a chair or a bedside table - but my mother insisted that this was the only thing suitable for the apartment. Her apartment." 

Presumably knowing Louis didn't play. Rush had learned some time ago that, unlike his father, not all parents considered their children to be people in their own right. Even in his own family there'd been assumptions.

His coat was getting in the way. Rush slipped it off to puddle on the floor. He flexed his fingers, regretting the lack of practice, and felt for the keys again. Bach's Prelude in C Major, a piece he'd known for years, one of the first he taught to students. 

Memory tugged at him again. He'd taught it to someone important, someone who hadn't sat there enduring lessons that their parents had paid for. Rush shifted into the Revolutionary Etude, an old favourite. The piano's mahogany case gave a twitch and then a massive shudder, and then Rush was playing on an instrument made of prosaic and battered oak, his fingers finding familiar chips on the keys. In the middle register one note plinked rather than ringing out like a bell.

He could feel someone nearby, closer than Louis, someone as comfortably familiar as this piano. Not Mona, who had no talent for music, nor Oliver, who attacked a piano in the same way he did his typewriter, all flurries of rapid-fire staccato, nor Mark, who'd said very firmly that he would much rather listen, thank you. Someone shifted on the stool beside him, impatient for her turn. Rush glanced sideways - and the piano keys were cool perfection under his fingers again, the stool empty of all but his coat.

Louis sat on the floor watching, the rope forgotten in his hands.

"Did you see her?" Rush's fingers stilled. 

Louis shook his head. "Not exactly. A blurry shape, at best. But I heard a voice."

"And?" Rush twisted right round.

"A girl saying, 'At least it's not Bach this time.'" Louis' mouth quirked.

"You like Bach if you don't know what it is," Rush blurted, and blinked at his own statement.

Louis leaned forward and began wrapping a mat around the piano legs. "Do you remember any more?"

Rush shook his head and put the piano lid down, going over to help. "If it's like the first time," he said, as Louis passed over a free end of rope, "then there was a chance to rescue her, after the vision."

Louis tied off his own end and stood up. "And you were outside. All right. Let's get this on the dolly and we'll take it downstairs."

"Where _are_ we taking it?" Rush felt for a grip amongst the padding.

"I have a friend - of sorts - who runs an art gallery on East 82nd. I'm hoping to convince Reuben it's an experimental sculpture. Or pay him." Louis stretched his arms around one end of the piano, and nodded at Rush. "On three."

They got it on the dolly, and made their way out slowly through the other room, now deserted but smelling of fresh paint, and through the open gilt-handled door to the service elevator. Louis tapped the call button.

"The stool." Rush hastened back. He put the stool over one shoulder and shook out his coat.

The wall behind where the piano had stood caught his attention. White, like the main room, but with a hairline crack running vertically down the middle, almost seeming to widen as he looked at it. A foot and a half away there was a parallel crack, wider, and a bulge in the plaster midway down. A hinge. A door, it had to be, hidden away for who knew how long; and what was waiting on the other side? Plaster dust fell in a gritty shower, and the door cracked open a fraction. Rush heard a muffled giggle. Another voice shushed them loudly. Rush reached out to push the door, excitement rising.

Connie swept into the room. "Did you find another mark? Here." She daubed white paint onto the wall, just where Rush's fingers were about to brush the plaster, and suddenly the outline of the door was gone, the surface flat and featureless. 

"Now get out." She smiled at him, her teeth bared like a shark's. "And tell my son he needn't bother coming back."

The freight elevator was still open, and Louis had manoeuvred the piano halfway in. Rush swung the stool in and stared blindly at the buttons.

"Are you all right?"

Rush shook himself and reached out to help Louis steer the dolly. "A door appeared in the wall. I could hear someone behind it. I was about to open it when Connie painted over the crack." All statements of fact, not feeling, but he couldn't keep the emotion out of his voice.

Louis hissed through his teeth. "I'm sorry."

"It wasn't you." Rush stepped back, the metal wall cold against his back.

"She always knows what's best."

"Where are you going to stay?" It wasn't just the piano who was homeless. 

Louis shrugged. They reached the bottom, and the elevator door slid open, but neither of them moved. 

"Your poem." Louis didn't meet Rush's eyes. "Three days and three chances, right? But this is the second chance on the same day."

Rush detected hesitancy. "And?"

"How sure are you that you opened the envelope the day it arrived?"

Shit. Rush felt the truth sink in, all the way down to his bones.

"Look. I can help." Louis sounded genuinely concerned. "I'll take you over to Columbia. There'll be someone around, even on the weekend."

"With a piano." Rush said flatly. It was at least three miles, and they'd have to go through Central Park. 

Louis grimaced. "I'll ask Al to look after it."

"I'm the one who fucked up." Rush couldn't let Louis go to all that trouble on his account. 

"My mother painted over your door." The elevator door started to slide shut. Louis jammed it with his foot. "Also, I can write this up next time I have a relevant assignment."

Rush grinned despite himself. "Do I get a credit?"

"At the very least," Louis assured him. The elevator door whined in protest.

"Piano first." Rush gave it a shove. Partly, he didn't want such a beautiful instrument left abandoned; mostly he felt he owed Louis.

Louis guided the dolly over the edge of the elevator with a double bump. "All right." 

Six blocks with a piano in a New York winter was not exactly enjoyable, but after ten minutes or so, the sheer ridiculousness of it all began to improve Rush's mood. Newsboys shouted unhelpful advice, bundled-up passers-by started when a similarly muffled piano rolled past them, and at every crossing at least a few people gathered, watching the two of them navigate the hazards of curbs and subway grates with the intent focus of spectators at a prize fight. Rush's muscles grew sore, and his shins stung from where he kept banging them on an edge that had escaped the padding. As they waited at yet another crossing, Louis unbuttoned his gaberdine coat and added it to where Rush's was slung over the top of the piano.

At 82nd a mounted policeman, his horse's ears twitching in surprise, held back traffic for them to cross. When they were safely on the sidewalk Rush bowed his thanks the sweeping concert bow he'd practised since childhood, and when he straightened Louis was laughing. Welcoming, rather than jeering; it made Rush feel he was finally moving away from the frozen, disconnected state he'd drifted into. The policeman touched his cap in acknowledgment and nudged his horse to walk on.

"You can stay over at my apartment." Rush could see Louis starting to demur, and shook his head. "Have the couch. Eugene won't mind."

"You don't have to offer. I can ask Reuben." But his mouth twisted slightly as he spoke.

Yesterday Rush wouldn't have asked. "How do you know him?"

Louis blew out a sigh. "All too well. Teaches at Columbia part-time and works here as a gallery assistant. Sharp dresser, very Bohemian, very smooth." He was looking into the distance past the piano, at the bare black tree branches guarding the park, intermittently occluded by passing traffic. "I had to get up at three to study, because I spent almost every evening with him. I lost all of my other friends, but I thought it was all right because I'd found someone worth standing up to my family for. But at the end of the semester he called me into his office, told me it had all been very pleasant, and he hoped my next boyfriend would appreciate the polish he'd managed to put on me, but it was over. Don't ring, don't call. And he'd be grading me a B."

Rush winced. Louis lifted one shoulder in acknowledgment. "One of my mother's friends saw us together at a jazz club. Eventually she found some social advantage in letting her know, as a concerned friend. And I believe that's where you came in."

And this was who Louis had to ask for help. Louis gave him a half-smile, as if trying to make him feel better. Rush, appalled, tried to think of anyone he knew who would take in a temporarily friendless piano. If only Mrs Oliphant were still in New York. 

Of course, there was Juilliard. If Louis could do this, then surely Rush could swallow his pride. "I think -" he began.

Footsteps clicked down the gallery steps. "Dear Louis." A neatly coiffed man in a pale lemon suit came over to Louis and put one hand familiarly on his shoulder. "I hardly recognised you. Is this a new look?"

Louis flushed. "Reuben. I need a favor."

"And you thought of me? I'm a little surprised. I thought we'd parted on good terms."

Rush couldn't listen to any more barbs. "Can we put this piano in your gallery?"

Reuben turned to survey him, eyebrows raised. "Excuse me." 

"This." Rush tapped the top of the piano. "It's a piano. 1880s upright. Makes music." 

Reuben's eyes narrowed.

Louis coughed. "Just temporarily."

"I really don't think that would be appropriate," Reuben said, with a regretful air. He looked from Rush to Louis, and then back to Rush again. "Are you my replacement? Louis, I'm insulted."

"Can either of you play that?" Unexpectedly, an older woman - grey-haired, with a striking necklace of jagged black stones, came down the steps of the gallery behind Reuben. She pushed past him to examine the piano.

"Madam, I'm dealing with these people." Reuben's tone was suddenly conciliatory. The woman ignored him. 

"Well?"

"I can play," Rush said, unsure what he was committing himself to. 

The woman nodded. "Bring it into the Pearl Room. The opening's at seven. Nothing more recent than last century, mind. My assistant will pay you." She jerked her chin at Reuben, who was visibly appalled.

"Madam, I hardly think we should employ people off the street - "

"Do be quiet," the woman said. Reuben subsided. "Hurry up," she added, over her shoulder, and went back into the gallery. 

"If you'll come this way," Reuben said, with a sneer, but his heart obviously wasn't in it.

The Pearl Room, according to the card outside, was showing a selection of esteemed historical portraits from a celebrated private collection, opening tonight and lasting for two weeks. About thirty paintings lined the blue velvet walls, and a low buffet table at the end was stacked with rows of glassware.

The woman - the gallery owner - indicated where they should place the piano and then left, summoning Reuben to follow her. She tossed a parting comment over her shoulder that, if they had to steal anything, to make it one of the Clairins, which were criminally over-valued.

The silence in the gallery when she left was deafening.

"Well," Rush said, and then couldn't go on.

Louis chuckled. "It was perfect, wasn't it? His face!"

"We ought to get the piano ready." Rush dropped to his knees and began tackling the padding. "We've still got time."

Louis unpicked a knot. "I apologise for what Reuben said to you." 

"What?' Rush sat back on his heels. "Oh. Don't mention it. I've had worse." And then, thinking about missed chances: "I'd also be insulted by the comparison. But I'd like to try it."

Louis' eyes met his, startled - but interested. "Really."

Rush nodded. "Really." 

Louis bent back over his knot, but Rush could see a smile.

When the piano was unwrapped, Louis began folding up the blankets. Rush stood up, brushing some lint from the piano top and thinking about what he could play. One painting on the side wall next to the gallery caught his attention, and he wandered over. A garden scene, or at least partly; a small girl with a serious face and a prim dress sat on the wall, her dog attentive at her feet; but she was looking beyond the formally arranged shrubs and flowers to the city spread out below her, humming with activity.

He shook his head, but he could still hear it; the noise of the city and its inhabitants, the clatter of cart wheels on cobbles, chatter in the streets. As he looked, the dog shook one floppy brown ear.

"Should I take these out?" Louis asked.

The leafy, slightly musty scent of chrysanthemums filled Rush's nostrils.

"I think I have to stay here," Rush said. Last chance.

Louis appeared at his shoulder. "What is it?" He peered at the painting, and jerked his head back as a cicada skittered up the stone wall.

"The answer to my letter," Rush said, frustrated that it all came back to that; an unsigned message, an insoluble gap in everyone's memories; and then he knew.

"Of course!" He felt his pockets, found them empty, and for a second he panicked. Then he remembered. "My coat. Please."

Louis handed it to him.

He'd stuffed the rest of the mail into his pocket that morning, reading none of it except the unsigned letter. Now he ripped open the other letters from his family, and skimmed them frantically, one eye on the still-living painting. Mark's letter, talking cheerfully about his classes, ("..miss you all, of course, it's far too quiet here..."), his father (.."with Cuffy visiting her sister I rattle round this house and have to manage my own dinner, although I doubt I do as well as you children did and would certainly never can a tomato."), Oliver's postcard ("...wish I could draw the Parthenon by moonlight, but I was never the family artist") - and, at the last, Mona's letter, almost entirely about her son until on the last page, she'd written, "but I know you'll expect at least one Shakespeare quote and this has been particularly on my mind of late, no doubt from watching Caleb grapple with his surroundings, all so novel and strange." On the next line she'd written "How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!"

A gap. References to someone who should have been there. And at the last, her name.

"My sister," he said to Louis, all the explanation he could manage, and put one hand up on the edge of the frame. His fingers brushed the clipped grass of the lawn.

"Miranda. Randy. Come home."

The girl's head turned, the image doubling; a three-dimensional presence shaking itself loose from the canvas and emerging back into their world. She put her hands out and Rush grabbed them, her fingers warm against his own.

"You did it!" She was half-sobbing, half-laughing. "I didn't think anyone could find me. Oh, Rush." Randy threw her arms around him, squeezing tightly.

All his memories were back. Impossible that they'd ever gone, but he thought he had an explanation. Assumptions, again, and missed chances. When he'd been found deficient in magic, it hardly seemed likely that another family member would have it instead. Randy was a dreamer, an artist, someone who put her whole heart into whatever she was doing. He had, now, a vivid memory of that first Saturday when she'd taken their pooled pocket money and gone to an art exhibition, and told them afterwards how the paintings were like worlds she could step into.

"I got lost," Randy said. Rush patted her on the back. His eyes met Louis' over Randy's head, seeing a connection; a thread of potential.

"We all do," he said. "But you got yourself home."

THE END


End file.
